Arts Journalists on Arts Journalism

I hope you all regularly follow the National Arts Journalism Program's (NAJP) blog ARTicles, edited by Laura Collins-Hughes. If you don't, or if you haven't visited in awhile, don't miss the current, ongoing discussion about the state of arts journalism, and the reality of dis-reality of a possible new arts journalism publication. It spans multiple posts (and don't miss the comments), but it's well worth the read:

Castles in the Sky, John Rockwell, May 27
Castle-building, step two, J. Rockwell, June 2
What the Hell's Wrong with NAJP'ers?, Peter Plagens, June 5
Of Castles, Peter and NAJPers, Douglas McLennan, June 7
Whatever. Let's Just Put Out a Publication, P. Plagens, June 8

I'm working on my own book- and visual-art-centric response now and will post it in the next day or two. Of course if you have ideas of your own in the meantime, speak up!

Update on Wednesday, June 9, 2010 at 08:28AM by Hol Art Books

This is my response/suggestion to NAJP. Posted at ARTicles, in the blog comments here: 

Imagining a serial art publication as an e-book

Starting with John Rockwell's "Castles in the Sky" and culminating most recently in this post by Peter Plagens, I've read with great interest the recent discussion regarding a possible new arts publication spearheaded by NAJP. The following is my long response, made not necessarily directly to this particular post but to the multi-post conversation overall. That said, Mr. Plagens' "Let's Just Put Out A Publication" exhortation well sums up my own conclusions.

What comes across most forcefully in the series of "Castles in the Sky" posts (including"Castle-building, step two", by John Rockwell; "What the Hell's Wrong with NAJP'ers?", by Peter Plagens; and "Of Castles, Peter and NAJPers", by Douglas McLennan) and in the related comments is that while there is a strong desire for a new arts publication, and a new approach to arts publishing in general, there's an overwhelming sense of exhaustion at the idea of organizing and raising the money for such a venture. Not surprising. It's fair to say that a plan that hinges on raising $20 million before ever producing anything, isn't much of a plan at all. A better plan, and I think a viable one in this day and age, might be to start small and cheap. If it works, great, keep at it. If it doesn't, no problem, just go back to the drawing board and try something else. So I offer here, my own small, cheap solution to all of your problems: An arts publication, in e-book form.

GO WHERE THE MONEY IS:
As I'm sure you've all noted, Amazon, Google and Apple are not investing massive amounts of capital in magazines, or newspapers, or blogs. They are, however, investing in e-books. E-book readers and e-book stores. While advertising and subscription sales for newspapers and magazines online and off continue to erode under pressure from the always-on, mostly-free world of the internet, sales of e-books are increasing at an amazing clip, and companies are investing accordingly. Luckily, with some basic systems in place (technology to create the files, distribution agreements to sell them), individual e-books can potentially be published with very little capital.

LEVERAGE YOUR AUTHORITY:
The most valuable thing the NAJP can do in any venture is to leverage its authority and professional standing. In a world where any a**hole with an internet connection can review and comment on the arts, your advantage is not in your talent--the a**holes have plenty of that--it's your authority. So, bring it to bear on the most pressing, most interesting, most current issues and trends in the art world. Imagine a e-book with a half dozen essays by NAJP members (or members of affiliate organizations) on the ethics of museums renting out their collections, or on contemporary figurative painting, or on the state of arts journalism. Books are no longer only for the past. They can now be produced quickly and still remain permanent, authoritative records of timely events.

WRITE TO GET PAID:
I want to encourage you, dear writers, to give up on the idea of getting paid to write. Instead, you need to write to get paid. Rather than getting a $500 check for an accepted article, get a percentage of the sales that article generates. Earn it. And earn more when you do it well. The better you write, the better you work with your colleagues to make that writing better, the better you promote the book to your network, the more you make. Take responsibility for the quality of the publication you are involved in, and get rewarded for excellence. And this is for everyone involved, writers, editors, publishers. Everyone takes a risk, everyone gets paid with their collective success. And remember when I said e-books could be published with very little capital? By exchanging up-front writing and editing fees for longterm equity, the initial capital investment necessary to publish an e-book (aside from any marketing) is more like $200, not $20 million.

Yes, there's risk in publishing like this, and even in good circumstances, it's surely not a cure-all. The economics of e-book publishing won't make anyone rich and the competition is stiff. But then again, an e-book is not only an e-book. It's a print-on-demand paperback book. It's a website. It's an app. It's an unbundleable, chunkable collection of texts to be sold and repackaged and resold year after year. It's a beginning. And it's easy to try.

Update on Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 10:11AM by Hol Art Books

And in further support of our argument, the estimable Virginia Quarterly Review has just released the first digital version of their quarterly ... as an e-book.